1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to gas conversion systems, and more particularly to systems converting gases using multiple gas conversion means with microwave plasma.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
In recent years, microwave technology has been applied to generate various types of plasma. In some applications, required capacity of gas conversion using plasma is very large, and it requires a high power microwave generator. The existing microwave techniques are not suitable, or at best, highly inefficient due to one or more of the following drawbacks. First, the existing systems lack proper scalability, where scalability refers to the ability of a system to handle varying amounts of gas conversion capacity in a graceful manner or its ability to be enlarged/reduced to accommodate the variation of the gas conversion capacity. For instance, the required gas conversion capacity may widely vary depending on the applications. Second, the economics of scale for a magnetron increases rapidly as the output power increases. For instance, the price of a 10 kW magnetron is much higher than the price of ten 1 kW magnetrons. Third, the system configured with a higher power magnetron would have a possibility that the whole system needs to be shutdown once either magnetron or plasma applicator has an issue. Thus, there is a need for a gas conversion system that has high scalability, less system down time, and is cheaper than currently available gas conversion system without compromising the gas conversion capacity.